I think my game plan for now will be new valve springs and stem seals in the motor and hold off on a cam till I have a Tranny that will hold the power. It will keep my seemingly never ending parts list just a little bit shorter and I’ll be the one tuning it so only thing I’m wasting is my time. Also it’s always been fun for me to do things one at a time and tune each time to really see what gives you how much power from the setup. On the up side my Chinese noisey boi came in today. Shaft play feels very minimal like it should for a journal bearing turbo. Damn thing is pretty heavy compared to the smaller turbos I work on most of the time but it should be worth it. Scaled it at 33.8lbs, inlet is just a hair over 4”, hot side charge pipe outlet is 3.5” and exhaust inner diameter is 3.25”, weird that they didn’t send a v band flange or clamp but I’ll order one up for it. Happy to see the exhaust isn’t like 4 or 5” because I don’t think I have room for a massive down pipe and really wanted to keep it simple and go 3” exhaust all the way back utilizing the stock exhaust tip.

 

3" will struggle, but will support 700hp. When I turbo my Tahoe she is getting a 4" DP because I want to get the exhaust out ASAP to prevent heat problems whilst towing. what are the specs on your turbo? Is the divided housing going to cause you issue on the single outlet manifold?

 

I’m not looking for crazy power out of the truck really. If I wanted to build a fast truck it would probably be a regular cab Colorado with a turbo 6.0 in it. As for the divided housing I don’t think it will be an issue. I will probably pull the hot side off and knife edge the divider to reduce turbulence. As for the specs here’s the link.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/GT45-T4-V-B...id=15021691930

i used the same turbo on a customers fc rx7 that was ls1 swapped and he said it worked out well. He later put a lq4 in it and said it was even better.

 

How long do you expect it to last you? can you use a legit rebuild on it? Some of those Taiwan Twirly Bois are such good knock offs that a legit rebuild fixes all the issues with them

 

No way to know for sure. I plan on running an oil restrictor on it and that usually extends the life of them quite a bit. All the reviews are good on the turbo and I’ll probably buy a second as a backup if this one takes a dump I’ll run the other one and have them warranty it out. I’ve actually had really good luck with some cheap turbos, the eBay 35r I ran on my Crx I had for two years, made 441awhp on 19lbs on pump gas on a 2.0l and when I took it off it still felt like new. I’ve bought a brand new precision unit only to have it take a **** on me in less then a month in a half, for the price of it I could have bought 3 eBay 35rs and still came out ahead.

 

VS Racing supposedly has good stuff for being Chinese, but their price gets really close to a name brand turbo (Borg). Ive seen all sorts of stuff in my time with a performance shop too. Garretts not make it down the 1/4mi after a fresh build, ON3's last 4yrs of constant beating. 20yr old Precision's still making 450hp, etc.

Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we dont. I see it has a 2yr warranty. Thats pretty good. Precision only warranties for 1yr on most of their stuff

 

I’ve had better luck with warranties on eBay turbos, precision basically gave me a bs excuse and told me that there was nothing they could do when their new turbo took a dump. Bw would be my first choice but I wanted to get my feet wet first and I’m pretty confident this one will get the job done. I’ve built about 70 turbo kits for 4 cylinder cars and majorly used “emusa” turbos, I had two fail on me prematurely, one because I overlooked shavings from tapping the 1/8th npt feed line and the other one was just a **** happens ordeal. Other then that there was a car I turbo’d over 6 years ago running great on the same $160 turbo. It was kept on a pretty mild boost setup like 9-10lbs and didn’t make a ton of power but a turbo Honda lasting 6+ years on a stock longblock is pretty solid.

 

I'll be watching your progress closely, I'd like to see how this works out for you. Im moving from a Procharger to a turbo (eventually) and I am not sure what to expect yet

 

In my opinion turbos are allot simpler then a supercharger. All they really need is oil feed/ return. The exhaust piping ran in and out of it, charge piping/ intercooler mounted and plumed in and a decent sized wastegate to control boost. I went with a 60mm wastegate as that’s what I ran on my turbo 5.0l ranger with a small hx35 holset and it had zero issues venting enough exhaust gas to run as low as 4lbs of boost. Changing boost level is much easier on turbo systems as all you need is different wastegate springs swapped out or a manual boost controller. Typically a ball and spring style boost controller will allow you to go up to about 2x what your wastegate spring is before the wastegate will get pushed open by exhaust pressure, the stiffer the spring the more boost you can run before hitting that issue. I’ve tuned probably around 2500 turbo Honda’s out here in Oregon and a handful of other random cars like turbo bmws and miatas on megasquirt. This will be my first time tuning hptuners on speed density but I’m looking forward to it since everything else I tune is speed density so I will feel more at home vs maf scaling and power enrichment tables. I’ll be sure to post allot of pictures of the setup as I build it because honestly anyone with a welder who can weld exhaust piping can handle it.

 

Finally broke down and ordered a set of sway bars. I went with belltechs because for one they were cheapest at just under $460 for the pair with hardware and poly mounts. I wanted to go with some big *** hell wig ones but most of the ones I found wouldn’t list diameter or were almost $400 for the rear bar alone. I just couldn’t bring my self to spend that kind of coin on a truck this old that probably still wouldn’t handle anywhere near as good as my little shitbox Honda. The reviews I read on the Belltech sways were all good so I’ll post some pics and an update once they are on with my thoughts on them. Also ordered a bunch of the misc stuff I would need for the turbo setup like v band clamps, flex pipes, a few couplers and a 3” mandrel bend piping kit with a ton of 180, 90 and 45 * bends and a few straight sections for $160, should be enough to do the down pipe and both charge pipes with room to spare. I still need to figure out what fuel pump I’m gonna go with as well as what map sensor to run. From my experience tuning cars the cheap Honda map sensors are they are straight garbage, they work less then half the time and they can go from working to not working at all pretty quick. If anyone has recommendations for a good map sensor I would love that.